Material Worlds

GET YOUR DAEMON ON! HIS DARK MATERIALS HITS TV, EPIC AMBITION INTACT

- Nick Setchfield And Adam Tanswell

JANE TRANTER SMILES AS she remembers the creative process that brought the multiverse-spanning His Dark Materials trilogy to TV.

“We fried each other’s brains,” says the producer, “and those of everyone around us.”

Sat next to Tranter is Jack Thorne, the man who adapted Philip Pullman’s novels for the screen. “I’ve done my fair share of screaming,” he admits.

Little wonder there were so many sizzling cerebrums. His Dark Materials is a beast: a beloved, award-winning epic that entwines science, magic and religion as it ranges across realities. Ambition is embedded in its very words, as much a part of the mix as witches and airships, parallel worlds and warrior bears. Even the title pickpockets a line from Milton’s Paradise Lost – a literary masterwork Pullman’s fully prepared to ruck with.

It’s been adapted before, of course: the National Theatre mounted a stage production in the early ’00s, while Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman starred in 2007’s The Golden Compass, a tepidly received take that killed a potential big-screen franchise at birth.

“I like a challenge,” says Tranter, who was instrumental in resurrecting Doctor Who during her time as controller of drama commissioning at the BBC. (A collaboration with New Line Cinema, His Dark Materials is the first offering from production company Bad Wolf, founded by Tranter and former Who producer Julie Gardner – and yes, the company name is a nod to the classic story arc of the Eccleston era.)